A
newspaper publisher and state senator from New Hampshire, the lengthy
named Orsino Augustine Jabez Vaughan was born on March 11, 1819 in
Hanover, New Hampshire, one of fourteen children born to Silas and Polly
Ingalls Vaughan. Nothing could be found on Orsino's early life and
schooling, and it is presumed that he received his education in the town
of his birth. Vaughan was admitted to the Connecticut state bar in 1846
and from there was named as register of probate for Gilmanton County,
New Hampshire in 1849.
Vaughan relocated to Laconia, New Hampshire six years later and soon after arriving became the publisher and editor of the Laconia Democrat (a local political newspaper), and continued in this position until his death. It is mentioned in the Illustrated Laconian
(where the above portrait of Vaughan was found) that he married a Ms.
Julia Cogswell of Gilmanton, who died a few years after their marriage.
In 1855 he remarried to Laconia resident Mary Elizabeth Parker, with
whom he had six children, who are listed as follows: Grace Anna
(birthdate unknown), Walter P. (born 1856), William A. (1859-1866),
Charles Woodward (born 1862), Mary Alice (born 1869), and Edward
(1872-1879).
In 1866, Vaughan was elected to the New Hampshire State Senate from
Laconia, serving one term, which concluded in 1868. In the year of his
election to that body, Dartmouth University conferred upon him an
honorary degree. Throughout the 1860s and early 1870s, Vaughan also
served as a member of the New Hampshire State Democratic Committee.
Orsino A.J. Vaughan died in Laconia on April 30, 1876 at age 57. His
burial location is unknown at the time of this writing but is (presumed)
to be somewhere in his hometown of Laconia. His wife Mary survived him
by over twenty years, dying in December 1898.
Portrait from Hatch's Illustrated History of Jamestown, Chautauqua County, New York, 1900.
Another
"Orsino" that made his name known in public life is Orsino Ellick Jones,
who, as luck would have it, was a lifelong resident of my home county
of Chautauqua, New York. A distinguished local figure who gained
notoriety through business, civic affairs and philanthropy, Jones's
political claim-to-fame rest on his service as a Republican Presidential
Elector for New York in 1880.
The son of
Chautauqua County pioneer Capt. Ellick Jones (1800-1866) and Louisa
Walkup Jones, Orsino Ellick "Sine" Jones was born on November 8, 1829 in
the town of Ellicott in Chautauqua County and married
in the mid 1850s to Louise A. Howard (1832-1887). The couple would
later have one son, Charles Howard Jones (1857-1905).
As a
young man in Jamestown Orsino Jones became active in the village's
volunteer fire department, eventually serving as its chief by the 1870s had established his name in the Jamestown business community, dabbling in real estate, serving as President of the Jamestown Cane Seat Chair Company in 1872, and later was an incorporator of the Chautauqua Lake Railway and director of
the Jamestown Street Railway Company. Active in Republican Party
circles in the Western New York vicinity, Jones was a member of the
Republican State Committee for a number of years and in 1880 served as a
Presidential Elector for New York. Described as being of the "Stalwart faction" of the Republican Party, Jones is mentioned in Volume 13 of the 1891 Chautauquan as being:
"Prominent
in party politics. His hand was in every public movement of the city of
Jamestown and the county of Chautauqua. He was a
hail-fellow-well-met-among men on 'Change, in social life and political
movements. He was a Stalwart of the Stalwarts. He was General Grant's
friend, wether he was coming to a Sunday school Assembly or camp meeting
or to preside over the nation."
Following his service as an elector Jones continued his interests in
the growth of Jamestown, serving as a Civil Service Commissioner for the
city, and in May of 1886 was selected as one of ten committee members
who drew up the charter
for the city of Jamestown. As a well-known man of means, Orsino Jones'
name was connected to a number of charitable and philanthropic endeavors
in Chautauqua County, including donating 67 acres of land
on the border of Chautauqua Lake to be used as a park. Jones would
later bequeath further property to the city of Jamestown in 1906 that
would eventually become the home to the O.E. Jones Memorial Hospital
(pictured below.) Erected at the cost of $100,000, the hospital's cornerstone was laid in 1909
(two years following Jones' death) and it still stands today, although
it is now known as an extension of Jamestown's WCA Hospital.
O.E. Jones General Hospital, a postcard circa 1915.
After
many years of being prominent in Jamestown public life, Orsino E. Jones
died at age 77 on January 25, 1907. He had been predeceased by his wife
Louisa in 1887 and son Charles in 1905, and all three are interred at
the Lakeview Cemetery in Jamestown under an impressive grave marker
(photographs below.) Jones was memorialized in Down's History of Chautauqua County as having been:
" A
native son of Jamestown, and no man in the city had a wider experience
or more varied life. He was a man of strong physique,
regular, temperate habits and a tireless worker........He did much for
the material advancement of Jamestown and gave liberally towards the
public institutions and charities."
From the Westfield Republican, January 30, 1907.
Buried in the Jones plot are Orsino, his wife Louisa and their son Charles Howard.
Orsino Ellick Jones, 1829-1907.
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